The Enterprise is your Voter Guide

November 2, 2012

Inside today's print edition of the Enterprise you'll find the Voter Guide, a four-page special section telling you what to expect on your ballot Tuesday in the Tri-Lakes area. It has federal, state and local race profiles, with each candidate's photo, hometown and party affiliations. It also has a sample ballot for every town we cover.

We hope it prepares you to vote Tuesday, especially if you're feeling overwhelmed and under-informed by the looming election, with all its road signs, robo-calls and negative TV ads. Voting is your civic duty, and we're going out of our way to give you what you need so you can vote in an informed manner.

While the Voter Guide is a nice, quick ballot roundup, it isn't enough to fully prepare you to vote. You need to know about the candidates: what they're like and what they're likely to do. The Enterprise news pages have had boatloads of that kind of information over the past year-plus, so if you've been a regular reader, you should be in very good shape. We're especially grateful for the hard, excellent and dedicated work of our lead political reporter, Chris Morris.

But maybe you aren't a regular Enterprise reader, or maybe you've missed or forgotten some key articles. For instance, if you're wondering who the heck these eight judge candidates are, you could really use Mr. Morris' profiles of them in last Saturday's paper.

So by all means, read up between now and Tuesday. It's easy to do on the "Politics" category of our website, which you can get to directly from the homepage or under the "News" heading. You'll find way more than just horse-race-type coverage; much of what we've done is "if elected"-type, issue-based stories.

For small snippets of information like candidate ads, press releases and polls, check out Mr. Morris' blog, News Notebook, on our website.

If you don't have Internet access, you may have to dig through the papers you haven't yet recycled. We can also help you buy some back issues here at the office if you know which ones you want.

The functioning of any healthy self-government absolutely requires free, informative, private media that are responsive to members of the public. For you in the Tri-Lakes area, we think it's a simple, honest fact that the Enterprise has done better than any other medium to inform you in advance of the election. No other newspaper, radio station or television station has covered the races on your ballot as well.

At the Enterprise, we try to carry on the tradition of the Adirondack guides of old, which we've memorialized in the guideboat pictured in our logo. You need a knowledgeable, honest, fair, unbiased guide to navigate this world we live in - especially to tell you about all the candidates you'll soon have to vote for. The Enterprise team will put that at the doorstep of your home every day, and online whenever you need it.